


As Any Young Man May

by Shenanigans



Series: The Juniper Suite [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics), Titans (Comics)
Genre: Creepy Fairy Tale, Jason Todd is Hemlock, M/M, Mentions of Character Death, Mildly Dubious Consent, canon is a loose garment, characterization based on pre52, dick grayson is goals, implied dick/roy - Freeform, implied roy/ivy, jason todd is a charismatic problem, mentions of drug use applicable to canon, mentions of roy/jade, none of the secondary pairings are that big so no need to clog the tag, roy is the best dad on the whole planet, there's ivy pollen to account for the dubious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:42:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25057894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shenanigans/pseuds/Shenanigans
Summary: Losing Jason wasn’t something anyone really got over. It wasn’t something that just wore off.Sometimes, he still dreamed of him; he dreamed of his hands and the tangled sweet sticky heat of the green. Some nights were filled with moans like felled trees and the tickling warmth of tendrils drifting idly over his lips. Some nights it was just Jason, laughing and sprawled out on a blanket in the red Arizona dirt or rambling idly about literature in the corner of his couch. Those were his favorites. He didn’t tell anyone about those. Those were his.
Relationships: Roy Harper/Jason Todd
Series: The Juniper Suite [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1814866
Comments: 22
Kudos: 87





	As Any Young Man May

**Author's Note:**

> this is a continuation of The Unquiet Grave because Jason doesn't like to be ignored. My beta Chasing is a stunning genius of grammar. Trust me on this.

Hoh Rainforest was a slippery and obscenely green tangle inside Olympic National Park. It felt haunted, silent as the moss suckled the waterlogged branches of pine. Roy tucked his fingers around the straps of his day pack; he was warm in his careful layers as he paused behind his kids where they scampered forward on the trail. They were taking a four day weekend, loose in the wild and ready to plow deep into the silent waiting woods. There was a vivid yellow banana slug undulating along the underside of a branch and he watched it for a moment before moving aside for a long haul through hiker with a soft smile.

Roy was home. Star City was his place, damp and soft-edged with the smell of crisp cold ocean and coffee. He loved the wink of mountain to the East and the low belling crow of ferry boats in the Sound. He liked the way the wet edges of the ocean would crunch lightly under Lian’s tiny booted feet, or the standard reckless cawing of seagulls begging for french fries on the pier. Roy Harper had learned he was built for this: a forest blissfully free of city noise while his kids trotted ahead of him.

Gamble was swimming in Roy's red hand-me-down rain jacket, the breathable material of the hood sticking to his forehead slightly as he kept a tight grip on Lian's hand. His adopted son was a gangly kid about to sprout into coltish arms and legs. Under the hood, his wavy chestnut hair was shaved into what Mia had pronounced a ‘bitchin’ undercut.’ The kid had a scar snaring his top lip from a fight with an old cedar chest after an aborted bed bouncing incident and wide, pretty honey brown eyes. His daughter Lian was in a matching green jacket, sized more successfully to her thin frame. It matched her pack, her leggings with sparkly thread woven into the seams, and her large, glossy alligator-patterned galoshes. Her black hair was caught up in two perfect ponytails her brother had combed into her hair, dark eyes mischievous as she flipped to walk backwards and wave at where Roy was following. 

They'd passed a family of Korean sightseers early on, amused at the way the entire family was staring in awe at another enormous slug. The father had turned, wiping at his damp black hair under the brim of a wide canvas hat and intoned, "Big worm," at Roy in heavily accented English.

Lian had explained that it was actually a slug in quick Korean. The youngest boy in the family had made a soft happy sound and the two had huddled together to poke at where the slimy creature seemed oblivious to the attention.

Hoh Rainforest crackled intermittently, creaking and hissing like water on a hot skillet. The water-logged branches hung heavy under the low misting rain that settled sleepily in the valley early in the mornings and clung tenaciously until the sun peered past the ridge of the Olympic Range to brighten the haze to magic. Other than the intermittent dripping, the sound of the trees, and a jangle of keys, they walked in relative silence.

It was better than screaming. It had been almost a year since Roy had first been woken to Gamble’s heartrending cries. He’d stubbed his toe painfully on the door jamb early that morning, hissing and ignoring it as he slammed into his son’s room. The boy had been tangled in his sheets, face red and wet as he screamed one word over and over: _Eden_. 

Roy had knelt carefully on the edge of the bed, hands up as he worked to not startle his son. They’d discovered in therapy that the safest way to work through his intermittent night terrors was to ease him awake. At ten now, he could do more accidental damage than when he’d been a small-for-his-age five. Roy had started whispering his name, a slow repetition to bring him up from where he was screaming and alone, bring him back to the family that loved him and out of the dark. He’d surface, eyes wide and wet. There was a wildness that had coated the boy as he’d clung to Roy that night in the park that surfaced in the gasping shivers after his nightmares. He’d huffed one soft noise that could have been Dad if Roy needed to hear it. 

He didn’t. Gamble had been his kid from the moment he’d held his hands out that night. 

The boy’s room was littered with sketchbooks, spiral bound journals, and plants. Gamble kept his clothes in the hamper or his drawers, neater than Roy himself. He liked to organize his books by color and had started a record collection that was ultimately cooler than Roy’s own. He’d shaken his head and let the kid buy a Peter Gabriel era Genesis album on vinyl, watching his daughter paw through vintage Motown boxes, pushed onto tip toes and dedicated as her nimble fingers pulled out female fronted groups. 

The purple haired teen behind the counter had lifted his eyebrows, acne scars disappearing behind a bright and genuine smile when the two had purchased their finds. His name tag noted him only as Lou. “Good choices, little people.”

“They were born cooler than anyone I’ve ever met,” Roy had muttered, smiling ruefully and turning Lian with an easy hand against the top of her head. She’d been talking to Gamble about the purchases and would have walked right into the door. Roy was sure her spatial awareness would get better. Her aim was already incredible. “I’m in trouble.”

Baristas, librarians, kindergarten teachers, women in the parks, and his entire family tended to agree with him. He tried not to take it personally.

Gamble reached out after they’d walked past the tourist trails, over the rope bridge, and deeper into the interior, tucking his fingers around Roy's wrist. Roy would pull him close, absently catching his opposite wrist with his free hand to stop the ten year old from sticking his fingers into his mouth. It was an old habit. Roy knew those were the hardest to break.

"You okay, little man?"

He’d asked the question that morning against Gamble’s soft hair, feeling the way his sleep shirt was sticking to bony shoulders. The boy had shaken his head and reached to curl a loose strand of Roy’s hair around his knuckles, smoothing his thumb over the coppery lock. “Can we go to the quiet place?”

“Yeah,” Roy had replied, huffing a breath and getting ready to pack his family up and drive to the peninsula.

Now, Lian raced ahead, putting her entire effort into splashing from one murky puddle to the next as they walked the Moss trail, headed West. Gamble usually loved the trails, almost breathless with enthusiasm as he pelted out of the car, jackrabbiting across the gravel parking lot to the trail head. Lian was always fussier, but chattered brightly and squirmed to keep up with her brother by the time Roy had gotten her zipper just right. He would let her grab his arm, swinging her easily forward to hear the delighted shriek before she windmilled through a brief flight to thump next to Gamble. His kids were a matched set of enthusiasm, both quivering with more energy than Roy after the long car ride. 

Gamble had a terrible but determined singing voice, cracking off key and emotive as Lian would reach over, wrestling him to try and cover his mouth as Roy sang along around a crooked smile, wrist draped casually over the steering wheel of his soft, baby blue Bronco.

"Dad! He's doing it again!"

"Don't question my art, Li!" Gamble would duck each attack and laugh as they ended up warbling through the final notes and laughing brightly at Lian's pout before flopping against her shoulder in what passed for an apology.

Lian had watched Gamble in the beginning like a wary cat meeting the new family dog, circling him and startling when he moved. Roy couldn’t imagine their life without him now, five years after he’d carried him out of that park, out of Gotham, and out of danger. The kid had needed to eat, needed to sleep, and needed clothes.

He'd needed a family and Roy did his best to get that kid everything he needed.

Gamble had started bringing plants home the same day he'd felt brave enough to go outside and explore the yard. Roy's living room was now crowded with a veritable topiary: broad-leafed fiddler palms, five varieties of pothos, a terrifyingly large fern that would toss out new fronds to pluck at the cuff of Roy's jeans whenever he passed it where it was potted - fat and happy as a toad - on the front porch. They’d started a small garden in the backyard once Roy had gotten them moved to the new house. They were planning an orchard.

It was a necessary arrangement after he’d caught the kid pocketing plucked starts of succulents, handfuls of soft velvety moss, and specific rocks that were frilly with long flat scales of lichen.

"It was quiet," Gamble had told him the first time he’d been caught, curling up small in the center of the bottom bunk, voice muffled around the fingers in his mouth.

Turns out kids and plants both thrived in Roy's house. One day, he was sure he'd stop being surprised. 

“ _Dad!_ ”

Roy pushed his hood back, swiped at the damp tangle of his hair, and smiled at where Lian was waving and pointing simultaneously. He gave Gamble’s fingers a squeeze and the boy nodded a vague answer. “M’fine. It’s-” 

Roy watched the boy’s nose crinkle, mouth crooked as he worked to find the right words.

“Flashbacks?”

Gamble made an abortive move to tuck his fingers into his mouth again, shaking his bony wrist and shoving his hand into his pocket instead. He pushed the toe of his hiking boot into the soft dirt, flipping a small patch of dead leaves over with a quick kick. “Weird dreams. It’ll pass. Don’t worry, Dad.”

Around them was nothing but unrelenting nature, swallowing the light and folding it up in cat’s cradle between the branches. Ferns unfurled in the low spaces between felled branches and velvety green bark. It smelled wet and verdant, a deep sort of loamy that made Roy want to close his eyes and bend, to push his fingers into the deep black earth and push until he was swallowed whole.

Roy had his own nightmares; he dreamed of green eyes glowing in the blackness and the way a kiss could taste like the weight of dark in a cave. He woke terrified and full of longing and loss. The dreams were stunning and evocative but tinted terrible with grief. They were scraps of memory and hope - green eyes and the feathery light touch of fingers skating questions into his skin like Roy was a book to be read by braille. The scraps of want and heat that flickered out of memory to linger in the back of his mind and wait until he was alone in the woods. He always felt at home in the shadowed boughs of the forest, always felt something like comfort in the way the silence sounded so close to a sigh.

“Come _on_ , slowpokes! I can hear the river!” Gamble slumped at Lian’s urgent yell, suddenly an old man in a red rain jacket and set out after her at a jog, speeding up when she threw a pinecone at him. It rolled and bounced, coming to a sudden stop like it had been trapped under an invisible foot.

“C’mon, Dad. Keep up.” Roy glanced behind him, sure for a moment that he heard something before turning back to where Gamble was following Lian. He would let them run themselves to manageable before they started the deeper climb.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Roy had told Dinah, exhausted and bleary-eyed with his arms full of the last vestiges of Gotham and a freshly-washed, sound asleep orphan. Dinah had just shrugged, catching him by the elbow, and steered him through the parking lot to where she’d parked her pretty black Florist Van that was mostly covered with a stylized decal of a pink peony.

“No one ever really does.” She’d nodded and let him nap on the drive back to pick up Lian from Ollie’s house. He had drowsed, temple against the cool window and the warm sprawl of the kid against his front, small hand curled into the back collar of his shirt. 

He had caught flashes of the city in a bleary series of moments between dreams. The ticking time of large street lights lulling him. He had closed his eyes and Jason was staring at him from behind a forest, blue eyes slowly glowing green. He had roused at a lift in elevation to follow the long curve of the highway as it heaved up to leapfrog over the warehouse district, the prickle of skyscrapers glittering against the deep black of the bay. Asleep, Jason had moved closer, fingers tracing curious over his cheek as his mouth moved, words muttered too low to understand, and Roy gripped with a crawling terror of being slowly consumed, looking down at where Jason’s fingers curled around his wrist - and saw only fingerprints pressed into bark that was spreading in lurching gasps up his arm. He’d roused again at the exit, noting the low hedge wall that separated the University from the smaller suburb Oliver lived in. He’d reminded himself of what was real by stroking lightly up the bony knobs of the boy’s spine where he was breathing in soft sleep warm puffs against Roy’s collarbone.

Oliver Queen owned a few houses and apartments throughout Star City, but Roy’s favorite was this one: the painted lady sitting atop a steep hill that skidded down to the waterline. The streets echoed with the fog horns of the ferry boats. It was within walking distance of several locally owned and operated fair trade coffee shops that tucked tables out into the greenspace around the lake. The house itself was three stories of mismatched Victorian sensibilities, a lovely aging beauty that stood with a straight back and lovely classic lines that pulled the eye away from the flashier newer builds to her easy smile. 

Roy loved this house. He loved its wide wrap-around porch, two sets of stone stairs leading up to the front door, and the singular smell of home. He loved that it was one of the first bits of his childhood Oliver had bought back.

“I don’t know if you can just keep the kid,” Ollie had said later that night while Roy spun a massive cup of perfectly pressed coffee between his palms and watched where Connor was braiding Mia’s hair on the couch in the open living room. He’d tucked the little boy into his old bed and managed to make it back down the stairs. The living room opened around the fireplace from the rail on the steps.

“I’m sure as fuck not giving him back to Gotham. Kid was feral, Ollie. No way. No way in hell.”

Roy had managed to get the kid into a shower, into some food, and into an overly large band shirt that he’d knotted at the collar to keep it on the boy’s bony frame. He’d scrubbed behind his ears, carefully clipped his nails, and stuffed a toothbrush into the boy’s mouth. He’d scrubbed away the last bits of greenery that clung to his hair, the sticky smears of sap and dried blood from the half-healed scratches. He’d had to hold himself back from scrubbing the kid vivid pink like he could scrub the Park off of him, like he could wash Ivy off of someone with just soap and water. He didn’t let himself think about Jason. He didn’t let himself think about the way he’d wondered just once, if he scrubbed Jay, would he bleed or would he seep sap? 

The kid sat in the tub, the water a greyish murky color and blinked at Roy from under the half mohawk they’d put into the shampooed hair, skimming his palms lightly over the sudsy surface. 

“You got a name?” he’d asked. The boy had just blinked. “I know you can talk, don’t try it. I’m Roy. And you are?” 

“Gabbel.”

“Gobble?”

“Gabbel.” The boy said it very clearly, enunciating carefully, but it stumbled around his mouth awkwardly despite his best efforts. 

“That’s not a name.”

The boy frowned, sniffing once, and repeated himself. “ _Gab_ -bel.”

“Gamble?” The boy sighed and went back to splashing lightly at the soap suds, giving up on Roy entirely. “Gamble it is.”

It had taken three years and seven months to make it official.

Roy glanced to the right, blinking into the low glowing haze of the afternoon. He was sure he’d seen someone in the trees. The long hikers of the PCT usually followed some of the further trails, rangy-legged, walking in that specific ground-eating gait of long miles to go before sleep. They would stick to the trail, typically careful to keep out of the rough. He tilted his head, listening for the softer rustle of chipmunks fighting in the undergrowth. 

“Hello?”

"Dad." Lian frowned at him, both hands on her hips in a move she had clearly learned from Dinah. She was the picture of put upon as she sighed, lifting both eyebrows as Gamble touched his tongue to his top lip behind her. The kid was amused at her antics and sometimes Roy let himself wistfully regret getting her a partner in crime. "How did anyone ever think Speedy was a good name for you?. You. Are. So... sloooooow."

"Rude." Roy pointed at her with a quick finger, face affronted as he glanced back to where he was _sure_ he'd seen something, compartmentalizing the creeping crawl of awareness down to focus on where she was close to throwing herself dramatically to the ground. "I am in peak physical condition." He started an easy amble, flexing lightly and mugging in their direction even as he ignored the gagging rolled eyes and soft muffled laughter. " _Peak_."

"Did Donna tell you that?" Lian was definitely her mother's daughter - ruthless.

“...Maybe.”

Lian had simply sighed, cocking her head as Gamble grinned at him. Roy shook his head and glanced left at the snap of a branch, stilling for a second and staring into the undergrowth. 

"There was nothing you could have done," Donna had told him, tracing light loving fingers along his jaw before scratching her fingers into his hair. Roy had needed her. After the park, he’d needed someone who would look at him and see the way he felt like a failure deeper than his bones. He needed someone who would sigh and reach for him even when he hadn’t been able to reach Jason. Donna had a wicked left cross and an open heart. He’d had his head in her lap, eyes closed and tucked back into the warmth of her body in the room he rarely used now that he was learning how to be a father, reveling in her strength and the weight of the love between them. She was beautiful in an unearthly way, black hair slippery with blue highlights and cold when he'd tangled his fingers into its heft. She could have been his everything. She could have been. She was beautiful in a way Roy was always glancing off of, surrounding himself with, and hidden behind.

"I know," he'd lied.

"Liar." Donna was the best of them even as she had left a bruise on his arm with the light squeeze. He always found her when he couldn't handle Dick's emotions alone. He would fold into her, mouth against the simple soft heat of her jaw while she whispered his name like he was something special, like he was important. Donna was his beating heart. Dick was his hope.

Dick emoted like sunshine at midday, inescapable and burning. It made Roy feel like a flashburned shadow on a wall, watching the incredible heat of something destructive and beautiful. Roy was always a shadow left behind by fire.

"I think I saw him," Dick had told him four years after the night in the park, earnest around the mouthful of fries he was eating from a basket cupped in his palm as they wandered Pike Market. He had that manic gleam in his blue eyes, a determined glitter that skidded dangerously around Roy’s lungs. He’d opened the door at Dick’s knock and opened his life for his best friend. Roy had left Gamble and Lian with Dinah at her flower shop, the boy sighing wistfully into the petals of the peonies as Lian reached continually for the snipping shears, deftly turned away by Dinah's trained hands. Roy dropped everything for Dick. “I think he recognized me.”

He had to; Dick took up all the oxygen in a room.

"Dick-"

"No, I'm sure it was Jay-"

"Damnit, Dick, Jason's _gone_."

Dick had a look. He would turn his head, squaring his shoulders even as he straightened. His jaw would go sharp and Roy would exhale around the way he had to stop himself from reaching out and cutting himself on the angle of it. Dick had a look - mulish and stubborn. Roy called it his Robin look, but in the end it was all Dick. It was the look he got when he decided something wasn't a lost cause. It was the look that meant Roy was going to bleed to see the winsome thoughtlessly beautiful smile Dick would give him when they succeeded, eyes bright, face flushed, and so utterly proud of Roy.

"It was _Jason_."

Pike Market gabled low overhead, filled with the press of people and a few soaring notes of steamed milk, children screaming, and hawkers calling out wares. Roy had carried his tote, filled with the kind of fresh vegetables his kids would eat and the other random groceries. They’d ducked from stall to stall, slipping easily through the crowd. He had been mind numbingly normal, paired in jeans, a t-shirt, a soft flannel, and his fatherhood. Dick was in a hideous blue-patterned shirt tucked into his jeans, belted, and somehow heartlessly cool in how little he cared about fashion. He was a lean line of desire that had eyes following them through the crowd, garnering them free tastes, and a thoughtless smile he tossed as carelessly as breadcrumbs to pigeons. He'd bumped Roy's shoulder, letting his temple rest for a moment on the point of bone before palming the back of his neck and pointing at the high walls of the buildings just past the last of the ceiling scaffolding.

"Race ya?"

"Not now," Roy had replied, swallowing and delighting that his best friend was here. That Dick was _here_. On the planet and choosing to spend time with him.

Dick had pouted and Roy was grateful to Lian for hardening his heart to that ploy and Gamble for teaching him _how_. He reached out, hooking Dick around the neck with an easy arm and pulled him into the throng. He handed the man a pint of raspberries that were easily the size of his thumb and enjoyed the easy weight and heat of him as they moved through the press of people.

He’d bought Gamble a potted heirloom tomato plant for their garden. Roy liked the way the leaves felt scratchy and left a smell on his fingers that made his mouth water and think of glowing eyes in the dark.

"Are you coming back to the life?" Dick had asked later, feet in Roy's lap while he sipped the cold bottle of some local pilsner. He'd made a face at the hoppy IPA Roy had suggested first and pushed the growler of ginger beer to Roy to enjoy.

Roy had tilted his head back against his couch, looking over at the large bay window of his small house and watching the tangle of pothos vines as they shifted slowly side to side in the faint breeze from where the window was tilted out. Four years back, he'd moved out of the small apartment he'd gotten when it was just Lian. He'd paused his life, paused the danger, and pulled tight to focus on the kids in his care. He'd bought a tidy three bedroom just beyond the edges of Green Lake with a fenced backyard and walk-in-pantry. He was working for Ollie.

"Put that brain of yours to good use," Ollie had told him, nodding approvingly as they'd stood at the entrance to the R&D lab for Queen enterprises. 

Roy had blushed, staring determinedly forward and not letting himself bask in the proud and easy stare Oliver Queen was giving him. "I don't know if-" 

"You don't have to. _I know_." Oliver had a deep voice, a little gruff under the goatee and broad cheekbones. He was a handsome man, carved and chipped rugged with a crooked nose that matched his crooked helplessly flirtatious smile. He was everything Roy had ever wanted to be. "It's _my_ company, after all."

"Ollie..."

"And you're _my boy_."

Roy hadn't told anyone that he'd had to bite his cheek so hard he bled to keep from crying. He had simply taken a step forward into this new life.

Dick's heel had flinched when Roy dropped a hand to rub absently, always a little ticklish at first. "I'm not out."

"You're not in, either."

Dick didn't know the effect he had on people. If he did, it would be cruel, but Roy could count it as just another thing on the list. Dick had sprawled across his couch like he hadn't just arrived back on planet, like he hadn't been fighting interdimensional demons, like he wasn't still wearing Koriand'r's kisses on his collarbone. He had just been Roy's best friend tucked into the dark chocolate leather in faded jeans that were frayed at the ankle and an untucked hideous blue button down that Roy was sure would be found in his laundry sometime later. 

Dick had a way of leaving bits of himself everywhere he went. He cared so much he was willing to rip himself apart to hold someone else together. So, Roy held him.

"I failed him," Dick had whispered over the phone line in the dark swollen grief of months after the park, like the words were shredding his throat as they came out. He'd sounded like he was breathing his own blood.

Roy had closed his eyes and rubbed his face, blinking blearily around his bedroom to find the time. It was the strange quiet hour between four and five in the morning when the world around them all finally seemed to sleep - one fickle bird trilling like an afterthought. "Dick?"

"I’m supposed to look out for him. He’s my _brother_."

Roy didn't have an answer. He had rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, just breathing into the phone call as he pulled a heel up to shove to sitting. Dick was somewhere windy - the static crackling over the line in loose intervals like maybe he was on a comm. Dick was always just toeing the line of self destructive.

Roy had always seen the line and just walked right past.

He told himself he remembered that night because a feathery frond of a fern had fluttered and traced lightly over his cheek, startling him to panic out of his bed and onto the floor while Dick sobbed. Gamble had been leaving plants everywhere, his small nimble fingers dirty, and potted bits of greenery starting to pebble every available surface in their new house. The kid didn't like shoes. He didn't much like clothes either, but he'd taken to wearing a loose set of denim overalls he rolled up over his skinny ankles simply because he could keep rocks in the pockets and a small trowel in the belt loops. Lian liked to follow him around, small fingers curled into the opposite loop as she watched him studiously repot a succulent start or set seeds to sprout.

Dick hadn't noticed, too lost in his self flagellating grief.

"Dick." Roy had waited until Dick made a small sound of acknowledgment. "You know I love you, but shut the fuck up." Roy had learned the only way to shake his friend from his feelings was to startle him into anger, to take a punch or two. “ _Jesus_ , Short Pants.”

"What?"

"I would fucking kick your ass right now if you were here and it wasn't some strange, not real time of the morning. Who let you be alone? I’ll fucking- You are not allowed to be alone right now. Where are you?"

There was a pause and Roy sighed, on his back and glaring at the fern that was waggling light fronds at him invitingly. It liked to catch in his hair in the mornings, leaving small broken bits of green tangled in the coppery strands for Roy to pick out as he brushed his teeth, brushed his hair, and forced himself to be human. "Are you in Gotham? Damnit, Dick. We are going to have a whole ass conversation about-"

"B has a new Robin."

It wasn't the first time Dick had told him this news. Roy sat up, wincing at the sharp pain as he clipped an ankle on the bed frame. "What?"

Dick laughed and it was the most heartbreaking sound he’d heard in years. “Batman needs a Robin, I guess.”

He’d met the new Robin on a Tuesday. The kid was petite, blue-eyed, and pale with a solemn sort of gaze that made Roy feel measured and weighed. He kept his black hair in carefully-styled spikes and used the black cape like a shadow, like he could disappear even while Roy was watching. Roy had rolled his jaw, swallowing back an anger that wasn’t this kid’s burden, and nodded once. “He’s an idiot and he’ll kill himself trying not to let you down. Don’t make me-”

“I understand.” The boy’s voice was lower than he’d expected out of that small frame and Roy exhaled. This Robin was armored, hidden, and serious. This kid wasn’t Jason. He’d never be Jason.

Jason had crossed his arms over his chest the first time they'd met, watching him from behind the white out lenses in the mask. Roy had been wearing his jeans, some bruises, and a cheesy grin under a headband he'd borrowed from Donna to keep his hair out of his face. "Fuck man, is this really the Titans?"

The kid had looked unimpressed and violent. Roy had thought about the way only Jason seemed to have that talent. Dick was good at looking stunning and gracefully blood covered. Jason was never going to be that lithe, but he bristled with something darker than Dick ever had.

Roy had recognized it. Roy knew that look from dingy living rooms and back alley deals. He knew that look as the posture of the poor. Roy had never been poor, just desperate. Dick had never been in need, just needy.

This kid knew what it felt like to lose everything and be left with nothing but ghosts, roaches, and regret. Roy resisted the urge to make him a sandwich by stuffing his hands into his pockets, jeans riding lower on his hips.

"You were expecting something else?"

Jason had opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but reconsidered, falling back into unimpressed. "I guess I really wasn't."

Roy had waggled his eyebrows and sauntered past him, pausing to whisper. "Good. No expectations means you can't be disappointed." He remembered that he'd smiled at the way the new kid had stiffened slightly, jaw working like he was trying to fight down the urge to shove Roy away. "Loosen up, kid. Sometimes, we play. Sometimes, we fight. Sometimes, we do _other_ things.”

"I'm supposed to train." Roy remembered the confused and oddly beautiful frown.

"Are you?" Roy had flipped backwards, walking with a curious tilt to his head as he squinted at the boy. "Or did we just tell the Bat that?"

This wasn’t Roy’s first Robin replacement. It wasn’t Dick’s either.

The first time it happened Dick had shown up at Roy's door drunk, loose-limbed and flushed as he mouthed silently before just reaching to tangle his hands in Roy's hair. Roy had let him. Roy always let him.

He'd steer Dick through the Tower to his room, pinning him with one hand to the chest as he worked his friend out of his clothes while Dick just needed him. He needed in a tactile and tangible way that left Roy to pick up the pieces and tidy up the room around him. He would pick up his socks, his shirts, his shoes, his confused soft noises of betrayal, and put them where they belonged.

"He can't do this, Roy," he'd mumbled, face so open and so brokenly betrayed Roy wanted to put his mask on him. "My _mom_ called me Robin. It's not _his_ to give out. It's not _his_."

"I know, Dickie-bird." Roy would brush the sweat-damp black hair off his brow, thumb smoothing over his eyebrow before catching those blue eyes. "What can I do?"

Dick wouldn't ever answer in words. Roy would wait until he'd curled onto his side, eyes closed and the space he took up small and compact in the center of the bed, small the way he managed to make himself contort as he prepped for a flip, world going upside down before righting itself out in a sudden and inexplicably stunning sprawl of limbs. He'd wait until Roy was done tidying before throwing a hand to catch Roy's wrist, tugging him back so he couldn't leave. Like Roy ever could.

Dick had settled on avoidance. Jason was the casualty of that cold war.

"Fucking hell, Dick. You okay?" he’d whispered into the phone, rubbing at the bruise that was already blooming on his ankle.

“No.” The wind had gone loud and Roy had imagined Dick in flight, the way he'd just skip one step before launching over the edge of a roof, back a long easy line and toes pointed, fingertips extended like he was on stage. “But I won’t fail this one. Not... not again.” 

Roy knew the feel of falling, the way it ripped his stomach up once from underneath and then tilted into terror that tipped into a stunning mind-melting freedom. He'd never found anything like it. Nothing really came close to that distilled perfection of being utterly present in the moment. Roy had looked. He'd lost himself trying to find something - anything - that could rip him away from himself.

He'd looked in a needle. He'd looked in the sharp stab of hips as Jade held him down, riding him wet and wanting with a knife just under his jaw. He'd looked in mouths and in bottles. He'd hoped and fucked and fought and spiraled.

Dick had set a bottle of water on the nightstand while he begged for him to just let him out, let him go. Roy had begged and Dick had done what Dick always did: he gave Roy what he needed instead of what he wanted.

There were some debts that were never repaid, just deferred.

"...hello?" The voice was a familiar whisper like the creak of old branches in heavy winds. It felt intimate. 

Roy Harper startled so hard he froze, ice cracking along his spine at the feel of a question breathed against his ear. It sounded like the groan of wood, the low timbre of something aching and rigid. His kids were twenty feet in front of him, walking hand in hand down the soft needle-covered trail towards the bridge that spanned the river. He was alone where he was in the woods.

“Roy-”

He was alone here and he couldn't turn in the brief half-second of realization that planted him in place. It was a hesitation of a breath, and he turned his eyes down and he was sure he saw toes next to his hiking boot, lungs frozen as adrenaline spiked cold through him. 

“ _Roy_?”

It was only a second. A second between his name and Roy shattering doggedly through the panic to turn, eyes wide as he was ready to face the threat.

Behind him the path was clear, the sun glittering in small puddles of collected rainwater, the velvety green of the moss clambering carefully up the thick tree trunks. The light felt liquid, like it dripped through the lacework of the pine to freckle the forest floor. It would be beautiful if Roy could convince his skin to calm, to convince himself he wasn't being watched. There was a weight to being watched. It prickled over his skin, years of working to be vigilant kept his pulse hammering and his eyes searching through the clearing. Something flickered at the edge of his vision and he turned, moving fast to try and catch a flicker of black and white behind a tree. A blink and it was gone, a soft touch at his elbow and Roy swallowed down a scared noise, dizzy and turning towards the threat.

He turned, scanning the trees slowly, eyes picking through the different shades of green on green easily, flicking from target to target until a soft crack behind him had him whirling and pulling a small knife from his pocket, blade flicked open and ready. He started moving the direction his kids had gone, steps light and silent on the soft damp earth.

"Roy?" The voice was just at his jaw again, soft and slow like a question pulled through taffy. "Roy."

He glanced to the left, a flash of pale skin in his peripheral. He could feel his mouth watering, panic pounding in his heart as he swallowed. He could feel his pulse at his elbows and wrists. There was no one there when he turned, just the placid dripping forest and the lingering feel of eyes in the feral green.

“He was there,” Dick had told him after he’d swallowed, stabbing a french fry into the puddle of ketchup at the edge of the greasy basket. “I could feel him.”

They’d been passing the seafood counters, the long shiny rows of fresh shrimp and the wide glossy eyes of perfect salmon set in ice. They’d edged around a group of tourists watching the fish tossers. Roy had frowned, hands useless at his sides. “You can’t chase every-”

“He’s alive, Roy. He’s still in there, still in that fucking park. He-”

Roy had felt a rage growing in him, pushed and prodded by the restless and unrelenting _hope_. “Stop. Jesus, Dick. Stop.”

Jason had smiled at him a few times. He’d smiled under the floppy tangled black curls and smattering of freckles over his nose and along his jaw. He’d smiled at Roy and it hadn’t felt like an afterthought. It had felt like _his_.

“Anyone tell you that you’re an idiot, Harper?” Jason Todd had been standing in the reflected New York sunshine, hair glossy and eyes a startling mediterreanean blue under thick lashes. He was a kid, stunning and violent, but a kid in his battered second-hand leather jacket and dogeared paperbacks. He was a kid who was used to taking a hit.

Roy had grinned at him, feeling awkward as always in his odd-colored hair, the ruddy sprawl of freckles and the knotted snarl of bow hardened fingers. “All the fucking time. You’re not special.”

“You sure about that?” Jason had slanted him a silken look; Roy’s mouth had gone dry. He’d thought about that look later, ashamed, fingers tight around himself as he panted desperate and wanting at the ceiling, sheets shifting as his heels scrubbed and pushed as he fucked his own fist.

He'd dreamed of Ivy for weeks after the park, dreamed of her voice and its sibilant hiss like the soft slither of vines on dry stone. He'd dreamed of the way her mouth opened on his name, the way it felt like carnal sin and heat under his touch. It smelled like the sweet want of fresh cut grass, slick cunts, and cedar. These dreams wore the low tones of wet clay and something darker and more primal. It smelled like blood and green. He'd dreamed of his thumb hooking onto the line of her teeth and drawing her _lower_.

He'd sigh and ache, fucking into the wet of her before looking down. 

Jason would look back, green eyes glowing in the hazy weighted dark of this dream, feral, inhuman, and dangerous as his lips stretched, leaving Roy's dick slippery. Roy came in his sleep like a teenager, panting and shaking awake face down in the rutted sticky mess he'd made of his sheets, fingers pulling the cotton from the edge of the mattress. 

"The hormonal imbalance will wear off," Batman's voice had told him, gruff and grieving before the line went silent. Roy hadn't wanted to ask in the first place. It had been months. He hadn’t wanted to bother the man losing himself in the cowl. He’d heard the whispers. He’d heard the soft broken sound under the command that night.

Losing Jason wasn’t something anyone really got over. It wasn’t something that just wore off.

Sometimes, he still dreamed of him; he dreamed of his hands and the tangled sweet sticky heat of the green. Some nights were filled with moans like felled trees and the tickling warmth of tendrils drifting idly over his lips. Some nights it was just Jason, laughing and sprawled out on a blanket in the red Arizona dirt or rambling idly about literature in the corner of his couch. Those were his favorites. He didn’t tell anyone about those. Those were his.

He dreamed of Jason and poetry. He dreamed that Jason was with him when he went out into the woods, slinging up his trail hammock on the longer through hikes. He let himself sigh into the way he’d just look over and Jason would be there, blinking in confusion and looking around the forest like he wasn’t sure where he was. He knew the look from the nights they’d spent in the desert, the way Jason had touched fingers to a boulder by the side of the trail, wondering over the red sandstone.

“I didn’t think shit like this was real.” He’d tucked his lips over his teeth, angry brows pulled together in a thick line of concentration as he spread his palm, splaying his fingers and rubbing the texture against his touch. “I’m not an idiot. I know it’s fucking _real_ , but like empirically. It’s a stated sum with no value.”

“Mispronouncing a word you’ve only ever read?” Roy had asked.

“Yeah, exactly.” The kid had been rangy, rambling into the size he would be one day. He’d been built like a bruiser, broad shoulders and impossibly tiny hips, thick powerful thighs. He’d been built like the Bat. Dick had always been lean and lithe, long straps of muscle that flickered under dusky skin. Jason was bundled brawn. He had the impression of breadth. “Like, the shit at the museum is just fucking styrofoam and, like, paint. This... it’s-”

“I love it here,” Roy had answered, wetting his lips and handing the teen a water bottle. The air was dry, wicking the heat away and leaving Roy reddened and blotchy under the endless blue of Arizona skies. “Wait until tonight. You’ll see stars.”

“You hitting on me, Harper?” Jason had looked over, eyebrows popping up as he quirked the question at Roy.

“You’d know if I was, but no. Literal stars.”

In his dreams, Jason would look out at the vista of green and mountains like he was seeing the beauty Roy _needed_ him to know.

Jason's eyes would always go red around the lash line when he was looking at something stunning. His eyes would go red and they'd seem so incredibly impossibly endlessly blue. Roy would watch the way the tears would build, gathering weight and purpose before spilling one at a time for Jason to smudge away with the back of his wrist with a wry sniff and slight frown. "Shut up."

"Didn't say shit, Jaybird."

He'd swing in his hammock and let Jason be a stunned poet, crying at the beauty of the world. It was his dream, after all.

“He’s _there_.” Roy had heard the stubborn in Dick’s jaw. He had wanted to hope too. “I know he’s there.”

Hope was a dangerous thing, heady and terrifying - inexplicably sharp and painful. It pushed him off balance and Roy needed to be stable. He needed to be here. He needed to be present.

He’d watched Gamble and Lian curled together in the mess of stuffed animals that littered Lian’s room. He’d watched from the doorway, shoulder set against the wood. He watched his daughter’s mouth pucker and twist as she slept. He watched Gamble’s mouth move, fingers shoved in his mouth as he shifted and tucked their bony ankles together and pulled a plush puppy closer to his chest, stroking endlessly over the satiny feel of the tag. Gamble had rubbed holes in every tag of every toy Roy had brought home that first year. 

“Self soothing is normal,” Dinah had told him.

Roy wondered if the growing pile of books on his nightstand was normal too, the pages soft and textured when he stroked over them in the soft circle of light as he read in the dark. Jason had liked to read.

“Dying is an art, like everything else,” Jason had quoted at him in his sleep during one of those dreams he would love so much in the morning, feeling it slip through his fingers even as he blinked awake. He’d placed the scene in his living room, surrounded by plants as Jason palmed the back of his couch and vaulted easily over. He was growing, impossibly older in the nights. Roy could feel the tickle of his wild black curls as he leaned close, grin that beautiful knifeblade Roy was always so tempted to touch, dimples like parenthesis. (His smile; only his.) It was one of those nights where Jason would whisper words of wonder against the shell of his ear. “I do it exceptionally well.”

“Plath.”

Jason had flopped back, careless in the corner of his couch and beamed at him. “You read it.”

“Of course, I read it.” Roy had let his hand reach out and pull Jason’s feet into his lap. “I read everything you tell me about.”

“People are gonna think you’re soft on me, Harper.”

“They’d be right,” Roy had hummed, a welling sort of happiness at seeing Jason on his couch. He seemed so alive. He took a pillow to the head, snorting at the way Jason was scowling through a slight flush.

“ _You_ fucking called _me_ , bro. What do you want?”

“I was just thinking about you today.” Jason’s face had gone smug, slippery, and he’d opened his mouth, tongue perched against his top lip like he was about to fling out a tart reply. “Not like that.”

He’d been waiting for Mia to finish talking with her hands so he could snag the basket of bread from where she was using it to punctuate her sentences. The family had been having Sunday Dinner. It’d been a Thursday, but they hadn’t cared. 

“Useless if we can only make accommodations for our family based on the outdated idea of religious holidays. We’re agnostic.”

“Buddhist.” Connor had pointed to himself with the finger he’d been typing with on his cell, returning to the easy swiping motion with a small huff of laughter.

“Exception,” Ollie had conceded before continuing. Roy had shoved Dick out of his bed and into clothes, letting his kids drag him out of their house and to dinner.

Mia had been explaining the dynamics of the local volunteer basketball squad and Roy had been hoping to snag the bread basket before she started to dribble. They’d lost the crescent rolls to that move three months back and Roy hadn’t been about to have a repeat performance. Oliver had sat at the head of the table, leaned to the side and whispering softly against Dinah’s ear, the tips of his goatee moving slightly as she closed her eyes on a private and small smile. Connor had been seated next to Dinah, Mia next to him and opposite of Roy. Their guest, Dick, had sat across from Connor, next to Roy. Lian had been next to Mia, Gamble on Roy’s right. Roy had been in the Jumper Seat, a space left at the opposite head of the table to represent the family that wasn’t present - a habit they’d started after Hal.

Dick’s phone had been rattling where he’d turned it face down on the table after frowning at the screen. He’d avoided Roy’s questioning gaze, turning instead to linger in Mia’s animated storytelling. 

Connor had made something stir fried and vegetarian, the smell of ginger and salt slapping into them as they walked in the door. They’d brought the salad, clipped from the garden and stacked with fresh multicolored tomatoes and lacy bitter salad greens and fresh mescaline.

Dick’s phone had stuttered on the table top again and he hadn’t frowned so much as paused awkwardly in a smile, taking it and shoving it into his back pocket without looking at it.

“So Jennifer was telling Kate that it was definitely Carson’s turn to get the ball-”

“That is a surprisingly suburban sounding group of children,” Oliver had muttered, glancing up from where Dinah’s ears were tinged red to arch an eyebrow at Mia.

“That’s a surprisingly biased thing to assume,” Mia had retorted, finally letting Roy take the basket.

“I admit to a bias,” Ollie had conceded, wetting his lips and tucking a quick kiss to Dinah’s jaw to lean back and listen.

“That’s big of you,” Mia had snorted, looking down at her now empty hand in surprise, gaze flicking to where Roy was setting bread on his kid’s plates, before clapping and opening her mouth again to continue. “Anywa-”

“Roy,” Connor had interrupted, green eyes lifting to blink once at him. It had been unusual for him and even Mia had gaped and closed her mouth, watching her older brother lift his phone. “Tim says to tell Dick to answer him.”

Connor had finally made it to Gotham and inevitably, picked up a Bat of his own. Roy wished he could be surprised, but some things were unavoidable. Tim was quiet and driven, endlessly fascinated by anything that could teach him to be better. He wanted to be _useful_. Connor had smiled wide and open, incapable of hiding and they’d become an odd pair: the most batlike bird and the guileless arrow.

“Roy,” Dick had replied, giving a saccharine sweet smile. “Can you tell _your_ brother to tell _my_ brother that it’s dinner time and I don’t-”

The phone in Connor’s hands had lit up and he’d frowned, small and delicate. “Tim says to tell Dick it’s important.”

Roy had lifted his eyebrows and simply waved between the two of them like he’d relayed each message individually and was now bowing out.

“Roy-”

Suddenly every phone at the table had started rattling, a low emergency alert sound drowning out the conversation and Dick’s jaw had gone hard, muscle jumping before he exhaled slowly.

“What’s a Hemlock?” Mia had asked, voice curious as she’d read the same text that was causing the commotion.

Dick’s chair hadn’t made any noise, just tipped back and was caught in a quick grab as he stood. He hadn’t said anything, just tossed Roy the closest thing he had to an apologetic look, grabbed his phone, and walked out of the room.

“Shit,” Roy had breathed.

“Shit,” Lian had repeated, tone and tenor a perfect match.

Jason had laughed as Roy stroked over the top of his foot, retelling the story with a fond voice. Jason had laughed, hard and bright in the dream, the edges of it starting to crack and grow dark. He’d laughed until he couldn’t breathe, a cough curling him forward with a groan. Jason had been changing, changing the dream in the rough rattle of coughing. 

The edges had cracked, shattering around them and Roy had wanted to say no, wanted to say stop. He’d wanted Jason to stay but the boy had lifted his eyes, terrified and blue for one brief moment before he’d dimmed, skin staining pale and green as his whole body spasmed, wracked with one bright painful sounding cough, and he’d exhaled brackish black water and pulpy green, bits of plant debris and branch. He’d choked and pulled a petal from between his lips, the dream fading fast to nothing but the pale white flower and the glow of green eyes dappling the dark.

Gamble’s screams had woken him that morning before he could scream himself.

Now, here, in the forest, surrounded by quiet, Roy wasn’t sure if he had woken up. That voice only happened in his dreams. He was confused, off balance, dreaming awake. He knew the voice in his ear. He knew that flash of pale skin. He knew the line of black and white across broad shoulders that was flickering around the edges of his vision. 

A flower dropped by his foot. It was pale and delicate, the kind that bloomed through the first press of snow, simple pale purple tint to the center. 

They didn’t grow here.

The world was slowing down, layering heavy and impossible on top of itself. The light moved in stop motion, his children oblivious and ahead of him as they crossed the bridge over the river. He was panicking in this welling weighted moment trapped in the tangle of this ancient forest, haunted by his own memory. He was the terrified fly trapped in amber.

“ _Roy_!”

He looked up and Jason was there, standing startled and barefoot in the path. He was there, tangled dark curls and a smudge of dirt over his cheek, broad strong hands dirty with thick lines of black earth under the nails. He saw the mud on his feet, on the edges of his frayed jeans. He looked like he’d clawed his way out of his own grave. Roy stared and Jason was talking, his mouth moving so fast with no sound. His face was urgent even as his eyes glowed green in the sticky honey-colored light hanging loose as tinsel in the forest boughs. He was spitting words, lips and teeth and eyes painting glowing trails as he swayed, forcing silence to swell, belling out around them both in the forest.

Roy stared. Jason was screaming at him, lifting his fists in stop motion jerks to beat against the silence in one concussive blast of movement. Roy was trapped on the other side; he could see the way Jason’s throat worked, the bulge of thick veins on his neck, the way his freckles prickled under the red of exertion. He was screaming and Roy could only hear the impossible endless weight of a silence so thick it was painful.

Jason took a step, a grotesque painful thing that twitched and shuddered through him like his joints had forgotten which way they were supposed to bend. He snarled, terrifying, and continued to creep and crash forward - a stumbling jerky pattern of pain that lifted a foot and flickered in and out of visibility. 

Roy was looking at Jason and then the forest and then Jason again, closer. Horrible and in pain, twitching and reaching for him, eyes going red in anger, face twisted in a familiar rage. Jason was fighting again, reckless, fearless, indomitable as he stood and brawled his way to Roy. The blue of his eyes swallowed by green and then bloomed red that hazed in the shadows. He watched the glimmering trails of them, the misting hypnotizing terror of something that was wearing a human body improperly. Jason was the skittering unfolding of a leaf, the sudden snap trap of a carnivorous plant.

It was inhuman and wrong, the beautiful wrists, broad shoulders and high cheekbones, the black curls moving in a breeze that didn't exist, wisping and curling like smoke. Jason was bleeding, skin transforming as he crept closer. Jason was green, worn by the forest, and Roy couldn’t look away.

He was pinned in place; skewered by the desperation in the thing’s expression. Jason was reaching for him. Roy’s heart thundered in his ears as it approached. He could smell it, the ache of sap and rot, the sweet smell of something crawling under the soft moldering weight of leaves, like fall and the sweating weight of a pinecone burned to open. It promised rebirth and heat. He wanted to move, eyes wide and unable to look away from the black wet threat of Jason's mouth moving in an endless stream of unheard words.

"Stop. Please, stop."

The forest didn't listen to something as small and unnecessary as Roy Harper. It continued to shift and move around him, the bloom of fickle fragrant flowers as Jason moved closer. The soft silken moss suckled at his shoes, curled and crept higher over his ankles. The forest was holding him in place like a firm hand holding him back against a brick wall. It felt like danger. It felt like _intent_. Roy had dreamed of Jason touching him again, but this broke cold sweat damp under his clothes, sticking his copper colored hair to his neck and slicking his brow in terror. He wanted to let go and let himself believe the lie of it, believe that Jason was shifting his fingers to touch, to trace the line of his broken nose, trembling to touch his jaw, and then shifting to push into Roy's mouth.

He tasted like dirt and something darkly, wantonly tangy. He tasted like something unreal and urgent, endless, and Roy wanted to open to it. He wanted to exhale Jason's name and be devoured.

Jason was so close, silent, and the threat was touching him like the scrape of a dry branch against a window. Roy shivered, pinned by the endless glowing red rage of this thing in front of him, this thing touching and pushing against him, into him. He couldn't stop the way he tried to make the shape of Jason's name, the way his tongue pressed against those cold dry fingers: the taste of wet moldering bark and damp lurking in the dark. 

Jason was a hungry thing pressing against him.

"Roy?" And there was a break, like a cloud passing over the sun and the world went monochrome against the impossible beautiful blue of Jason's eyes. "Help me. I _can't_ \- I can-"

The forest snapped back to a simple lovely green, the threat gone between heartbeats. The sun glimmered and the bridge over the river creaked as Lian screamed happily and ran back and forth. Gamble was staring at where Roy was shaking, stunned as his knees simply gave out and he folded to the ground in a heap of terrified limbs and sharp glass-edged hope.

“Dad!” Gamble was sprinting even as Roy swallowed air in huge gulps. It was like surfacing, desperate to breathe again. 

Roy felt Gamble’s hand on his neck, the light touch of fingers before he was able to look up, able to try and find a way to fight back to his feet to smooth the fear out of his son’s eyes. Behind them, Lian was pressing close, threading her arms around them. “I’m ok-”

Gamble shook his head, looked around the silence of the forest, and bent to pick up the lone white flower from where it was half broken in the dirt. He swallowed, staring wide-eyed at Roy.

“He’s waking up.”

**Author's Note:**

> Jason throughout the last two parts has been referencing a poem by Sylvia Plath called Lady Lazarus. It seemed fitting. It's available online for free and honestly, there's something devestating about paralleling her work to his life.
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy. Comments are lingered upon and touched lovingly before responding full of heartswelling adoration. Thank you for reading!


End file.
